In AUS servers get horribly stacked every night to the point where it's not even worth playing the game. ..
Looks left, looks right.. Wait where is Xao with a giant rage post on this already?
But yes, the stacking does put me off playing on weeknights in Aus, mainly because there will be 3, maybe 4 full servers to choose from, and if you get in one that has an omgwtfclanstack there are not many other servers to change to. Weekends isn't so bad as there are more servers to switch to.
Why not just hide the teams until you get into the game; Sure people will F4 but if they are too slow they won't be able to join regardless.
This might work, unless the stackers are on TS/mumble/steamchat etc and agree to join the same team anyway. It might stop others from wanting to join the organised ones though.
I think an option to vote random is a good idea. One server is Aus was regularly randomizing teams when the admins were on. I had some pretty good rounds on it like that. Not every round was perfectly balanced, but it was a heap better than joining the same old server with the same people stacking one team repeatedly.
Every player should get an "effective players" rating, and then the join team gates decide whether to let you join a team based on the number of "effective players" rather than the number of actual players. If you are awesome, you might be worth 2 of the average player. If you are brand new you might be worth half of the average player.
This would let people stack and stomp some noobs if they want, but they will be fighting all the noobs on the server, because the counts of effective players will determine this to be balanced.
I don't think the statistics to compute this would be too difficult. You'd make your unit of measurement the average winrate when one team has one additional player, then just do stochastic gradient descent on the outcome of every round.
dunno not giving much credence to the "average" or "noob" who pulls his weight and does his best is it?, dunno about you but i wouldn't want to join just to make up the numbers and treated as much thats the vibe you get in f2p games, if you just get chain raped over and over through no real fault of your own you don't get better you quit and play/do something else and this isnt so good for the longterm playercount for an already niche game, not everyone is into the league/clan/competitive stuff and just want to play the game for the fun and have an even sided decent match up.
IIRC one thing i remember from ns1 apart from the gameplay mechanics being changed every update was the hiding of k/d in teamscore, hidden player names is a good idea coupled with the former at least for first 5-10 mins might make things a bit more random for being in a random game.
Anyway this stacking is getting worse imo especially when they're marine and with the skulk nerf, getting games where you get 2-3 players on the 1 team with clan tags or 1000hr played with 20-2 etc and the rest of the team have 6-4, 2-3 etc they pretty much carry the rest of the team and dominate the server , pretty boring and uninspiring.
I think at most if the server admin wanted to flag his server in the server config as having random only that may be a good option and I'd also entertain the idea of having a random team vote in game that if passed will restart the game and re-distribute players according to their kill/death ratio at the time of the vote passing trying to make both teams equal in that respect. Having it auto forced out of the box on pub servers or making it mandatory would be bad.
I have the DAK admin mod on my server and if someone types "random" into the chat it will initiate a vote.
This type of thing has to be left up to Server Owners and their Operators (Admins). Most run DAK (or was it DAX) Admin Mod that have a random feature built in that Admins are able to activate whenever they want. Some servers also run a vote option for random teams. It can also be a little of both, it just depends on where you play and how well the servers are policed.
Stacking does ruin about 50% of the games I play. I think there should be a force random feature built into the game, perhaps voteable by the players, that way if 3-4 people are stacking a 16 player server, 8-10 people could enable a forced random by vote. Random stacks do happen but at least its not every single round..
And for those crying about "but I want to play with my friends!" well too bad, go join a server where everyone else is at your own skill level! Stop pub stomping and you won't have to worry about it.
This type of thing has to be left up to Server Owners and their Operators (Admins). Most run DAK (or was it DAX) Admin Mod that have a random feature built in that Admins are able to activate whenever they want. Some servers also run a vote option for random teams. It can also be a little of both, it just depends on where you play and how well the servers are policed.
Problems with this are there are those who don't like randomall they quit and server starts dying "wtf why am i alien??" and they don't come back, and as it takes a round to see whether its unequal (unless you're amongst friends/clan) the other team start complaining about it the admin doesnt do anything or says random next round by that time most will have quit.
Like a guy above said, the nature of RTS is that the first 5 minutes are critical. IMO, we should allow conceding much earlier if the commander wants to concede. Ie, if commander is ready to concede at 5 min in, then only 1/3 of the team needs to agree to concede and the game forfeits.
All the stats or match-making ideas won't work in the NS2 format. They work in SC2 because most people are playing 1v1, so the MM algorithm is MUCH easier. If we add in people who must play on the same team as their friend(s), we introduce even more constraints on any match-making algorithms. With a faster conceding scheme, people who are good will realize that if they don't help balance the match, then they won't get to play a stomp-fest. I actually agree that ~half of my pub games are nowhere near balanced and are not fun. I don't understand why the devs decided to make it harder to concede unless too many people were trying to go for a 1-min base rush.
I think the randomall idea is better than what we have today but I prefer the commander having much more power to concede.
Lets say there is a flag the server admin can flag to activate to force random. How about if the server shows as a different color in the browser so you'll know its a forced random server before you join. This way you can attract only players who are looking for the "random" sort of thing.
Here's how just about every single game I play goes: Join in to a server near the end of a steamroll (very very few games have had any kind of back and forth), game ends, lobby consists of everyone standing on one side attempting to stack one team...get bored of every match being exactly the same, quit and start playing a different game completely. Wasted about an hour tonight going from server to server trying to find some kind of decent match...every time it was the exact same thing.
And for those crying about "but I want to play with my friends!" well too bad, go join a server where everyone else is at your own skill level! Stop pub stomping and you won't have to worry about it.
Bit short-sighted here I'm afraid.
Many of my friends who play NS2 don't play very often and aren't very good. I want to play with them (we are real life friends and chat on mumble in addition to using the game chat), regardless of the fact that it makes our team sometimes a fair bit worse than 'random.'
Of course, this isn't universally true, but it's a real case for me that should tell you your view is not the whole story.
With that said, stacked teams aren't any fun, and I would support some *reasonable* and subtle global change to mitigate this problem for default settings servers.
Neither I nor the majority of my friends (there are some exceptions) are capable of dominating a pub server to the point of unbalance.
Stacking does ruin about 50% of the games I play. I think there should be a force random feature built into the game, perhaps voteable by the players, that way if 3-4 people are stacking a 16 player server, 8-10 people could enable a forced random by vote. Random stacks do happen but at least its not every single round..
And for those crying about "but I want to play with my friends!" well too bad, go join a server where everyone else is at your own skill level! Stop pub stomping and you won't have to worry about it.
While I agree stacking is frustrating and not fun when it happens over and over how do I find out from the server browser what servers best match my current skill level?
@current1y, it's not about your current skill level, it is far more about not following the heard of good players onto the same team 3 rounds in a row. If you walked over a team, split your team up. It doesn't take that many players to effectively stack a team and of course by conclusion to unstack them by mixing it up a bit
@current1y, it's not about your current skill level, it is far more about not following the heard of good players onto the same team 3 rounds in a row. If you walked over a team, split your team up. It doesn't take that many players to effectively stack a team and of course by conclusion to unstack them by mixing it up a bit
While this is true, there really is no fix aside from having some mod that allows an admin to physically pick out players for each team. Obviously that idea would be absurd and would piss off a lot of people. A stat ranking system that assigns players to each team based off of a balance algorithm would also be extremely hard to implement. Auto random is also not a viable solution either. Sometimes it works and sometimes the teams are even more stacked. It takes away the players freedom of choice. This is something I do not want to deal with every game. On a side note, this thread is one of the rare times I actually agree with Strofix. Friends want to play together. Its fact. Take away that option and you will lose some of the player base. This pertains to casual players especially.
@joshhh I agree with everything you said - until we convince people (which sometimes will not be possible) that a fun game, is a competitive game, and that means occasionally splitting up your friends to create a balanced environment this will be a significant problem. It will ALWAYS be a situation, that's what makes the games fun. Part of the fun is not knowing how skilled your enemies are, and being dropped into being afraid of a particular player can be rewarding, and/or maddening at the same time
Friends playing together is not always stacking, stacking is not always a result of friends playing together.
It is simply a matter of one team having a larger proportion of (relatively) higher skilled players than the other, and the solution is to spread the skill as evenly as possible between them.
All the stats or match-making ideas won't work in the NS2 format. They work in SC2 because most people are playing 1v1, so the MM algorithm is MUCH easier. If we add in people who must play on the same team as their friend(s), we introduce even more constraints on any match-making algorithms.
The soft matchmaking system I suggested here would work very well for the NS2 format. It would allow people to play on the same team as their friends, if they wished to. As far as algorithms go, something like TrueSkill would work for team games and would be easy to implement. Even a naive multiplayer extension to Elo would work well enough. Matchmaking is a thoroughly studied and well-understood task.
While I agree stacking is frustrating and not fun when it happens over and over how do I find out from the server browser what servers best match my current skill level?
The soft matchmaking system I suggested would include a change to the browser to display the average skill level of the players currently in a server. You'd be able to pick whatever server you wanted: low level for an easy game or high level for a challenge.
until we convince people (which sometimes will not be possible) that a fun game, is a competitive game, and that means occasionally splitting up your friends to create a balanced environment this will be a significant problem. It will ALWAYS be a situation, that's what makes the games fun. Part of the fun is not knowing how skilled your enemies are, and being dropped into being afraid of a particular player can be rewarding, and/or maddening at the same time
The soft matchmaking system I suggested would help with this problem. First, it would make stacking clear to everyone, obviously and undeniably. It would make accusations of stacking less subjective, less dependent on actually knowing the players involved, and less common when stacking isn't actually taking place. It would make playing a stacked game less socially acceptable by making consideration of team skill balance a fundamental part of pregame setup.
Second, while everyone would know when the teams were or were not in balance, you wouldn't necessarily know the skill level of individual players, so you could still be surprised in game.
Comments
Looks left, looks right.. Wait where is Xao with a giant rage post on this already?
But yes, the stacking does put me off playing on weeknights in Aus, mainly because there will be 3, maybe 4 full servers to choose from, and if you get in one that has an omgwtfclanstack there are not many other servers to change to. Weekends isn't so bad as there are more servers to switch to.
This might work, unless the stackers are on TS/mumble/steamchat etc and agree to join the same team anyway. It might stop others from wanting to join the organised ones though.
I think an option to vote random is a good idea. One server is Aus was regularly randomizing teams when the admins were on. I had some pretty good rounds on it like that. Not every round was perfectly balanced, but it was a heap better than joining the same old server with the same people stacking one team repeatedly.
LoL/dota2 either have or are making servers for Aus, I wouldn't give ENSL/CG another season and NS 2 6 more months in Australia.
dunno not giving much credence to the "average" or "noob" who pulls his weight and does his best is it?, dunno about you but i wouldn't want to join just to make up the numbers and treated as much thats the vibe you get in f2p games, if you just get chain raped over and over through no real fault of your own you don't get better you quit and play/do something else and this isnt so good for the longterm playercount for an already niche game, not everyone is into the league/clan/competitive stuff and just want to play the game for the fun and have an even sided decent match up.
IIRC one thing i remember from ns1 apart from the gameplay mechanics being changed every update was the hiding of k/d in teamscore, hidden player names is a good idea coupled with the former at least for first 5-10 mins might make things a bit more random for being in a random game.
Anyway this stacking is getting worse imo especially when they're marine and with the skulk nerf, getting games where you get 2-3 players on the 1 team with clan tags or 1000hr played with 20-2 etc and the rest of the team have 6-4, 2-3 etc they pretty much carry the rest of the team and dominate the server , pretty boring and uninspiring.
The conclusion would be always true if and only if "You have fun only with your friends"
I have the DAK admin mod on my server and if someone types "random" into the chat it will initiate a vote.
And for those crying about "but I want to play with my friends!" well too bad, go join a server where everyone else is at your own skill level! Stop pub stomping and you won't have to worry about it.
Problems with this are there are those who don't like randomall they quit and server starts dying "wtf why am i alien??" and they don't come back, and as it takes a round to see whether its unequal (unless you're amongst friends/clan) the other team start complaining about it the admin doesnt do anything or says random next round by that time most will have quit.
All the stats or match-making ideas won't work in the NS2 format. They work in SC2 because most people are playing 1v1, so the MM algorithm is MUCH easier. If we add in people who must play on the same team as their friend(s), we introduce even more constraints on any match-making algorithms. With a faster conceding scheme, people who are good will realize that if they don't help balance the match, then they won't get to play a stomp-fest. I actually agree that ~half of my pub games are nowhere near balanced and are not fun. I don't understand why the devs decided to make it harder to concede unless too many people were trying to go for a 1-min base rush.
I think the randomall idea is better than what we have today but I prefer the commander having much more power to concede.
The arrival of the first local dota2 server has all but killed NS2 in South Africa.
Sad day.
Bit short-sighted here I'm afraid.
Many of my friends who play NS2 don't play very often and aren't very good. I want to play with them (we are real life friends and chat on mumble in addition to using the game chat), regardless of the fact that it makes our team sometimes a fair bit worse than 'random.'
Of course, this isn't universally true, but it's a real case for me that should tell you your view is not the whole story.
With that said, stacked teams aren't any fun, and I would support some *reasonable* and subtle global change to mitigate this problem for default settings servers.
Neither I nor the majority of my friends (there are some exceptions) are capable of dominating a pub server to the point of unbalance.
While I agree stacking is frustrating and not fun when it happens over and over how do I find out from the server browser what servers best match my current skill level?
While this is true, there really is no fix aside from having some mod that allows an admin to physically pick out players for each team. Obviously that idea would be absurd and would piss off a lot of people. A stat ranking system that assigns players to each team based off of a balance algorithm would also be extremely hard to implement. Auto random is also not a viable solution either. Sometimes it works and sometimes the teams are even more stacked. It takes away the players freedom of choice. This is something I do not want to deal with every game. On a side note, this thread is one of the rare times I actually agree with Strofix. Friends want to play together. Its fact. Take away that option and you will lose some of the player base. This pertains to casual players especially.
It is simply a matter of one team having a larger proportion of (relatively) higher skilled players than the other, and the solution is to spread the skill as evenly as possible between them.
The soft matchmaking system I suggested would include a change to the browser to display the average skill level of the players currently in a server. You'd be able to pick whatever server you wanted: low level for an easy game or high level for a challenge.
The soft matchmaking system I suggested would be fairly easy to implement.
The soft matchmaking system I suggested would help with this problem. First, it would make stacking clear to everyone, obviously and undeniably. It would make accusations of stacking less subjective, less dependent on actually knowing the players involved, and less common when stacking isn't actually taking place. It would make playing a stacked game less socially acceptable by making consideration of team skill balance a fundamental part of pregame setup.
Second, while everyone would know when the teams were or were not in balance, you wouldn't necessarily know the skill level of individual players, so you could still be surprised in game.